


Displacement

by Canarii



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen, Other, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canarii/pseuds/Canarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Tonight, tell us about displacement, in 100 words. If you can do it in fewer words, please be our guest!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Displacement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lannakitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lannakitty/gifts).



> ((OOC: Obviously failed the 100 words thing. An idea I've been toying with for a while, since so many verses I've Rp'd have been with an Ashley, I've never played with how that might have gone down in the early days))
> 
> Also a big thanks to Lannakitty, who is forever my Ashley.

She didn't wear the dead girls' clothes. Didn't sleep in her bed. Didn’t watch stupid stupid movies with Hank or have heart to hearts with the Doc. She didn't touch that stale box of Froot Loops in the back of the cabinet, and she never ever went anywhere near the gilt handgun that sat abandoned on a shelf in the armory.

Kate knew a lot about possession. The human desire to mark things, as theirs was strong and primal. After a while it seemed like she could see the marks people left on the things that belonged to them. The ghosts and imprints of possession crafted onto them like fingerprints and a practiced eye the blacklight.She made a point to never touch Blondie's things, but it couldn't change the fact that she'd fallen right into the dead girl's life.

The dead girl. No one said her name out loud, they didn't have too. And Kate knew she had less right to speak it than any. She may be crass, bitchy, even tactless sometimes, but she knew where to draw the line. The loss of a daughter was etched in the building's walls, set in Will Zimmerman's calculating stare, mining for deception with every glance and gesture. Pain was in his wariness the same way the devastation laid in the lines of Magnus' smile with the tension that said it used to be wider.

Kate reads the collective mourning in every snap Henry has prepared, and the way realization tinged with disappointment betrays Magnus' cool exterior when on occasion; she'd bark on order on a mission, turn and expect to see blonde hair and blue eyes. A few time Henry almost slips, almost calls her The Name.

She never even knew Ashley Magnus, and she kind of hates her. The bitch just had to go off and die and now Kate was feeling guilty all the time about something that wasn't even her fault. Walking in the ashes of her life, and even the scraps and remnants that Kate stepped into feel good on some sick level. She's following a ghost's footsteps and somehow it's right.

Because sometimes they forgot. Sometimes Will takes off the cop eyes off, and sometimes Henry forgot that she worked for the people that had murdered his vest friend. And sometimes, just for a moment or two, Helen Magnus will call out behind her, turn and not expect to see anyone but Kate.

Kate wonders what it is exactly that she sees.

She stays, because when there's silent accusation, and disappointment, there's also increasing jokes. Small talk. Adjustment.

Just for a little while. She told herself. Just until the Cabal business blows over and she could go back to work. But then Magnus sends her out solo or Big Guy brings her a slushie on a stakeout and some tiny voice inside her mentally decides that a couple more weeks couldn't hurt.

No one was expecting it. Kate didn't catch the details. Freak electrical storm, Nubbins chewing on the EM wiring, lots of swearing aimed in the general direction of some guy named Nicholas or something.

It all happened so fast. One minute Kate's handing Henry tools while he desperately tries to reset the wildly fluctuating EM shield and the next second every computer in the lab's going up in sparky hell and there's a naked blonde chick on the floor.

Then there's crash carts and infirmary beds and there's nothing she can do to help and now she's the ghost. Fading in shades of grey into the walls as the owner of the space in all of this she was only renting came home.

The bus ticket out of town is easy. Getting past the front gates is easier, and she'd never totally unpacked. Something in her says that she should have moved on sooner. Something else accuses of her of running away.

Well she _wasn't_. She wasn't getting pushed out of anything. You couldn't be evicted from a life that never belonged to you to begin with.


End file.
